Home Depot Staff Honor Children With Dravet Syndrome Through Weekly Warrior Wednesdays

William and Addison Smith met and fell in love in 2021 while working together at the Home Depot store in South Lakeland, Florida. They have since left those jobs, driven out not by choice but by the demands of raising two daughters, Nova, now 3, and Denver, 21 months, both diagnosed with Dravet syndrome, a rare and severe form of epilepsy. The store, however, has not let the family go.

Every week, employees at the South Lakeland location stage what they call Warrior Wednesdays. Staff dress in purple to honor Nova and Denver and other children with the condition, whom participants refer to as "Dravet warriors." Some employees wear shirts bearing a logo and statements promoting awareness of Dravet syndrome. The effort is led in part by Dawn Wilson, Addison's mother, who still works at the store and serves as a living link between the family and their former colleagues.

The stakes behind the gesture are real. Dravet syndrome causes heightened sensitivity to light and heat, both of which can trigger epileptic seizures, meaning Nova and Denver face severe limitations on their ability to venture outside the family's Lakeland home. When the girls do visit the South Lakeland store, they arrive equipped with special sunglasses and cooling vests. The staff greet them as celebrities.

"Seeing an entire store show up like that for our children has been incredibly moving," Addison said.

Addison left her Home Depot position first after the diagnoses, with William following later. That departure could have severed the family's ties to the store entirely. Instead, the weekly ritual has kept those bonds intact, transforming a retail workplace into a community anchor for a family navigating one of the rarest and most demanding pediatric epilepsy diagnoses.